This just in: White, Privileged Male says there’s no such thing as white privilege. :rolleyes:
Actually… there is.
“white male” is a minority of the population, yet they are considered the norm (hence, you saying there was nothing special about them) yet they control a disproportionate amount of the material wealth and political/social power in the US.
That doesn’t make them evil or inherently cruel - there are a lot of very decent white men. Nor are they as “privileged” as they used to be (for example - it is no longer legal to pay women less than men for the same work, or non-white people less than white people for the same work). The playing field is (slowly) leveling. But saying white people (including myself) don’t still have some passive advantages in our society is like saying racial discrimination no longer exists in our society - it does. If you can’t see you aren’t really paying attention, or don’t want to see it.
Men are nearly always victimized by other men. This doesn’t mean men are at a disadvantage compared to women, who are also nearly always the victim of men.
If that’s the case, why are positions of power and authority (and wealth) so disproportionately held by white men? Do they have more talent? More competence? More willingness to try hard? More likely to do a good job? Why, statistically speaking, do they keep ending up in these positions as a rate that far exceeds their population in general? If pretty white women are the most privileged, why are so few CEOs of major corporations? Senators? Fuck, even as movie stars white women generally can’t leverage that “privilege” to make as much as their male co-starts.
Agreed, and this is bad. It’s also something that is changing, and such cases are less likely to be laughed out of the room than they were in the past. Social change, in this specific way, is going in the right direction.
That isn’t true at all. Try to be a man that calls the police for a wife that just broke his ribs by drop kicking you in your sleep. I have and the police laugh in your face. They will not do anything at all even if you ask them to. That is one reason of many why I am divorced. I have been punched, kicked, slapped, groped and verbally abused by so many women over the years that I have lost count. The reason they do it is because they know I can’t fight back because I will be the one that gets in trouble for it. None of those were for anything major. They were just petty disputes that escalated and they saw a window of opportunity and knew that I couldn’t defend myself so they decided to take advantage of the situation.
Women and girls can be aggressive as hell. My youngest daughter, the gymnast, is generally sweet but she will attack without hesitation when the mood strikes. I have had to pull her off her older sister many times. Lesbian marriages have some of the highest physical abuse rates of anyone.
Are you going to answer this?
Yes, of course I will. The reason is that men have a broader distribution of traits than women do for almost everything. That has nothing to do with the average man. Most of them are complete screw-ups but there are a few that find true leadership capability. The few you see in high profile jobs are the exception and not representative of men as a whole.
That is like judging women by people you see on the cover of Vogue. Yes, the models really exist but they are extremely rare. Male leaders happen to be more common than female ones but there is nothing stopping the latter.
In fact, there is something stopping the latter - male privilege that cannot see itself for what it is.
Just to be really clear: you think that under representation of women in positions of leaderahip is because dramatically fewer women are smart/driven/talented enough to perform at that level?
Do you feel the same way about under representation of African Americans?
Not at all. I am a senior consultant for a mega-corp with billions of dollars under control. My big boss has a woman as his boss and she is mine too in a way. We don’t really make distinctions based on sex. It is only about competence and that is the way I think it should be.
I personally don’t care about the underrepresented of any group at all. Either you can do do a certain job or you can’t. This is not a charity. I already have literal Africans that do just great so I don’t want to hear nay excuses. I grew up as a poor boy in rural Louisiana so either do it or don’t.
TIL that even poor people have nannies in Louisiana.
**by OP
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True. Funny how no one envies men their disproportionate representation on the left tail of the bell curve. It’s only the right tail that everyone wants a piece of.
I like you too monstro but that was a fact when I was growing up. I had an old black nanny even when we lived in a single-wide tailor next to my grandparents property when I was 17 months old until after I graduated from high school. A lot of people have a really hard time of understanding that. It didn’t cost any significant money because it was a love and barter relationship.
Lola wasn’t an employee. She was a family member and was treated as such. She had all of her needs taken care of and we loved each other dearly. My brothers and I listened to whatever she said but her main role was just to watch TV (especially the Price is Right) and correct us if we were doing something wrong. She also did random chores around the house but her main job was just to hang out with us to to make sure we didn’t get killed and we listened.
If she was a family friend that was so beloved, you wouldn’t be calling her a “nanny”. You’d call her a dear family friend. That’s what I call the adults that helped raise me, even those that received payment in return.
That was only her external description to others. She was only “Lola” to me and I loved her more than most of my own grandparents. She was super-important and the person I pray to when I need guidance or inspiration. I was devastated when she died in her 90’s because I was too far away to do much except go to her funeral. I am crying right now just writing this because I miss her dearly.
I’m sure some slave-owners mourned the deaths of slaves they grew close to.
This sounds harsh, and it’s meant to be. The Old South tradition of subservient blacks, even well-treated subservient blacks (which was far from the norm) was absolutely a truly evil arrangement, and responsible for some of the worst suffering and worst atrocities in our history. If you really love Lola, recognize that the socio-economic situation that put her in your house was due to a great deal of evil, brutality, mass rape, torture, and casual murder. Mourn her, and mourn the arrangement that taught you that the situation of your upbringing was okay, and mourn the state of the country in which so many people mourn and/or celebrate these monstrous traditions of the Old South.
And here we go.
It never worked that way despite popular narratives. I loved Lola and she loved me and my brothers and you better bet your ass that we listened to her. I listened to her even as an adult and her word was law. If she said it, that was the end of it.
She had some family but they were 200 miles away but they were free to stay with us and sometimes did. Lola was a legacy of the Old South but it certainly wasn’t a travesty. We basically adopted and loved her as a family member. There was never any chance of anything bad happening to her even though that was a real risk. I had an earlier nanny, Hazel, that got stabbed and murdered in her sleep just for a few dollars. It was horrible and I never want to see people go through something like that again.
None of this conflicts with my point. It’s difficult coming to terms with the horrors of history when they indirectly benefited you in some way, but it’s still important. It’s not okay that Lola had to spend more time with your family than her own family, even if y’all loved her and treated her very well. It’s not okay that she was taught as a child, as she almost certainly was, that she was inferior to white people and had to be subservient to them.
None of this was your personal crime. But still you benefited from it, and many others suffered for it and for crimes like it. To properly honor Lola’s memory, you should recognize this and work to dismantle the legacy of these moral crimes.